Chapter III - The Northern Powers

We have already alluded to a princely family, of the same clan-
name as the Chou Emperor, which had settled in the southern part
of modern Shan Si province, and had thus acted as a sort of buffer
state to the imperial domain by keeping off from it the Tartar-
Turk tribes in the north. This family was enfeoffed by the new
Chou dynasty in 1106 B.C. to replace the extremely ancient
princely house which had reigned there ever since the earliest
Emperors ruled from that region (2300 B.C.), but which had
resisted the Chou conquest, and had been exterminated. Nothing
definite is known of what transpired in this principality
subsequently to the infeoffment of 1106 B.C., and prior to the
events of 771 B.C., at which latter date the ruling prince,
hearing of the disaster to his kinsman the Emperor, went to meet
that monarch’s fugitive successor, and escorted him eastwards to
his new capital. This metropolis had, as we have explained
already, been marked out some 340 years before this, and had
continued to be one of the chief spiritual and political centres
in the imperial domain; but for some reason it had never before
771 B.C. been officially declared a capital, or at all events
the capital. Confucius, in his history, does not mention at
all the petty semi-Tartar state of which we are now speaking
before 671 B.C., and all that we know of its doings during this
century of time is that rival factions, family intrigues, and
petty annexations at the cost of various Tartar tribes, and of
small, but ancient, Chinese principalities, occupied most of its
time. It must be repeated here, however, that, notwithstanding
Tartar neighbours, the valley of the River Fen had been the seat
of several of China’s oldest semi-mythical emperors-possibly even
of dynasties,-and at no time do the Tartars seem to have ever
succeeded in ousting the Chinese from South Shan Si. The official
name of the region after the Chou infeoffment of 1106 B.C. was the
State of Tsin, and it was roughly divided off to the west from its
less civilized colleague Ts’in by the Yellow River, on the right
bank of which Tsin still possessed a number of towns. It is
particularly difficult for Europeans to realize the sharp
distinction in sound between these two names, the more especially
because we have in the West no conception whatever of the effect
of tone upon a syllable It may be explained, however, that the
sonant initial and even-voiced tone in the one case, contrasted
with the surd initial and the scaled tone in the other, involves
to the Chinese mind a distinction quite as clear in all dialects
as the European distinction in all languages between the two
states of Prussia and Russia, or between the two peoples Swedes
and Swiss: it is entirely the imperfection of our Western
alphabet, not at all that of the spoken sounds or the ideographs,
that is at fault.

The Yellow River, running from north to south, not only roughly
separated from each other these two Tartar-Chinese buffer states
in the north-west, but the same Yellow River, flowing east, and
its tributary, the River Wei, also formed a rough boundary between
the two states of Tsin and Ts’in (together) to the north, and the
innumerable petty but ancient Chinese principalities surrounding
the imperial domain to the south. These principalities or
settlements were scattered about among the head-waters of the Han
River and the Hwai River systems, and their manifest destiny, if
they needed expansion, clearly drove them further southwards,
following the courses of all these head-waters, towards the Yang-
tsz Kiang. But, more than that, the Yellow River, after thus
flowing east for several hundred miles, turned sharp north in
long. 114o E., as already explained, and thence to the north-east
formed a second rough boundary between Tsin and nearly all the
remaining orthodox Chinese states. Tsin’s chief task was thus to
absorb into its administrative system all the Tartar raiders that
ventured south to the Yellow River.

But there was a third northern state engaged in the task of
keeping back the Tartar tribes, and in developing a civilization
of its own-based largely, of course, upon Chinese principles, but
modified so as to meet local exigencies. This was the state of
Ts’i, enclosed between the Yellow River to the west and the sea to
the east, but extending much farther north than the boundaries of
modern Shan Tung province, if, indeed, the embouchure of the
Yellow River, near modern Tientsin, did not form its northern
boundary; but the promontory or peninsula, as well as all the
coast, was still in the hands of “barbarian” tribes (now long
since civilized and assimilated), of which for many centuries past
no separate trace has remained. We have no means of judging now
whether these “barbarians” were uncultured, close kinsmen of the
orthodox Chinese; or remote kinsmen; or quite foreign. When the
Chou principality received an invitation by acclamation to conquer
and administer China in 1122, an obscure political worthy from
these eastern parts placed his services as adviser and organizer
at the command of the new Chou Emperor, in return for which
important help he received the fief of Ts’i. Although obscure,
this man traced his descent back to the times when (2300 B.C.) his
ancestors received fiefs from the most ancient Emperors. From that
time down to the year 1122 B.C., and onwards to the events of 771
B.C., nothing much beyond the fact of the Chou infeoffment is
recorded; but after the Emperor had been killed by the Tartar-
Tibetans, this state of Ts’i also began to grow restive; and the
seventh century before Christ opens with the significant statement
that “Ts’in, Tsin, and Ts’i, now begin to be powerful states.” Of
the three, Tsin alone bore the imperial Chou clan-name of
Ki.

[Illustration: Map.

1. In 2200 B.C. the Yellow River was divided at the point where
our map begins, and the main waters were conducted to the River
Chang, which thus formed one river with it. But a secondary branch
was conducted eastwards to the Rivers T’ah and Tsi (now, 1908, the
Yellow River).

2. In 602 B.C. this secondary branch suddenly turned north,
followed the line of the present (1908) Grand Canal, and joined
the main branch, i.e. the River Chang.

3. The capitals of Ts’i and Lu are shown. The Yellow River divided
Tsin from Ts’i, but Tartars harried the whole dividing line.]

North of the Yellow River, where it then entered the sea near the
modern treaty-port of Tientsin, there was yet another great
vassal state, called Yen, which had been given by the founders of
the Chou dynasty to a very distinguished blood relative and
faithful supporter: this noble prince has been immortalized in
beautiful language on account of the rigid justice of his
decisions given under the shade of an apple-tree: it was the
practice in those days to render into popular song the chief
events of the times, and it is not improbable, indeed, that this
Saga literature was the only popular record of the past, until, as
already hinted, after 827 B.C., writing became simplified and thus
more diffused, instead of being confined to solemn manifestoes and
commandments cast or carved on bronze or stone.

“Oh! woodman, spare that tree,
Touch not a single bough,
His wisdom lingers now.”

The words, singularly like those of our own well-known song, are
known to every Chinese school-boy, and with hundreds, even
thousands, of other similar songs, which used to be daily quoted
as precedents by the statesmen of that primitive period in their
political intercourse with each other, were later pruned,
purified, and collated by Confucius, until at last they received
classical rank in the “Book of Odes” or the “Classic of Poetry,"
containing a mere tenth part of the old “Odes” as they used to be
passed from mouth to ear.

Even less is known of the early days of Yen than is known of
Ts’in, Tsin, and Ts’i; there is not even a vague tradition to
suggest who ruled it, or what sort of a place it was, before the
Chou prince was sent there; all that is anywhere recorded is that
it was a very small, poor, and feeble region, dovetailed in
between Tsin and Ts’i, and exposed north to the harassing attacks
of savages and Coreans (i.e. tribes afterwards enumerated
as forming part of Corea when the name of Corea became known). The
mysterious region is only mentioned here at all on account of its
distinguished origin, in order to show that the Chinese
cultivators had from the very earliest times apparently succeeded
in keeping the bulk of the Tartars to the left bank of the Yellow
River all the way from the Desert to the sea; because later on
(350 B.C.) Yen actually did become a powerful state; and finally,
because if any very early notions concerning Corea and Japanese
islands had ever crept vaguely into China at all, it must have
been through this state of Yen, which was coterminous with Liao
Tung and Manchuria. The great point to remember is, the extensive
territory between the Great Wall and the Yellow River then lay
almost entirely beyond the pale of ancient China, and it was only
when Ts’in, Tsin, Ts’i, and Yen had to look elsewhere than to the
Emperor for protection from Tartar inroads that the centre of
political gravity was changed once and for ever from the centre of
China to the north.

We know nothing of the precise causes which conduced to unusual
Tartar activity at the dawn of Chinese true history: in the
absence of any Tartar knowledge of writing, it seems impossible
now that we ever can know it. Still less are we in a position to
speculate profitably how far the movements on the Chinese
frontier, in 800-600 B.C., may be connected with similar
restlessness on the Persian and Greek frontiers, of which, again,
we know nothing very illuminating or specific. It is certain that
the Chinese had no conception of a Tartar empire, or of a coherent
monarchy, under the vigorous dominion of a great military genius,
until at least five centuries after the Tartars, killed a Chinese
Emperor in battle as related (771 B.C.). It is even uncertain what
were the main race distinctions of the nomad aggregations, loosely
styled by us “Tartars,” for the simple reason that the ambiguous
Chinese terminology does not enable us to select a more specific
word. Nevertheless, the Chinese do make certain distinctions; and,
as what remains of aboriginal populations in the north, south,
east, and west of China points strongly to the probability of
populations in the main occupying the same sites that they did
3000 years ago (unless where specific facts point to a contrary
conclusion), we may fairly assume that the distribution was then
very much as now-beginning from the east, (1) Japanese, (2)
Corean, (3) Tungusic, (4) Mongol-Turkish, (5) Turkish, (6)
Turkish-Tibetan, and Mongol-Tibetan (or Mongol-Turkoid Tibetan),
(7) Tibetan. The Chinese use four terms to express these relative
quantities, which may be called X, Y, Z, and A. The term “X,” pure
and simple, never under any circumstances refers to any but
Tibetans (of whom at this time the Chinese had no recorded
knowledge whatever except by name); but “X + Y” also refers to
tribes in Tibetan regions. The term “West Y” seems to mean
Tibetan-Tartars, and the term “North Y” seems to mean Mongoloid-
Tunguses. There is a third Y term, “Dog Y,” evidently meaning
Tartars of some kind, and not Tibetans of any sort. The term “Z"
never refers to Tibetans, pure or mixed, but “Y + Z” loosely
refers to Turks, Mongols, and Tunguses. The terms “Red Z”, “White
Z,” and “North Z” seem to indicate Turks; and what is more, these
colour distinctions–probably of clothing or head-gear-continue to
quite modern times, and always in connection with Turks or Mongol-
Turks. The fourth term “A” never occurs before the third century
before Christ, and refers to all Tartars, Coreans, etc.; but not
to Tibetans: it need not, therefore, be discussed at present. The
modern province of Sz Ch’wan was absolutely unknown even by name;
but several centuries later, as we shall shortly see, it turned
out to be a state of considerable magnitude, with quite a little
imperial history of its own: probably it was with this unknown
state that the bulk of the Tibetans tried conclusions, if they
tried them with China at all.

Be that as it may, the present wish is to make clear that at the
first great turning-point in genuine Chinese history the whole of
north and west China was in the hands of totally unknown powers,
who completely shut in the Middle Kingdom; who only manifested
themselves at all in the shape of occasional bodies of raiders;
and who, if they had any knowledge, direct or indirect, of India,
Tibet, Turkestan, Siberia, Persia, etc., kept it strictly to
themselves, and in any case were incapable of communicating it in
writing to the frontier Chinese populations of the four buffer
states above enumerated.